On Thursday during a forum with business leaders in South Carolina, Newt Gingrich doubled down on his call to end child labor laws. During the forum, Gingrich called for replacing New York City janitors with five year old children.

After explaining that working would give children an “education in life,” Gingrich told the audience all about his plan to replace hard working adults with kids that are easily manipulated.

“So, if you took the cost of the New York City janitors, the most expensive janitors in New York are paid more than the highest paid teachers. The entry level janitor is paid twice as much as an entry level teacher. It’s all because of the union. So, I say let’s keep two janitors who are adults who are professional. They do all the heavy stuff and the dangerous stuff. And let’s take all the other jobs and divide them up into part-time kids.”

The fact is, Gingrich and the Republican Party want to end child labor laws so that they can replace union workers with cheap labor. Children are easily manipulated and if Gingrich were allowed to put his plan in action, corporations wouldn’t have to provide health care to their new child labor force because they would all be working part-time. This is a way for corporations to eliminate adult workers and would aid in the Republican scheme to end public education. When would young kids find time for school if they are working for pennies? The answer is they wouldn’t. And at that crucial age, school is very important to the development of young minds. If children have to work, it would most likely have to be during the day, when schools are in session. Children will miss valuable educational lessons and will grow up to be ignorant, which is exactly what the Republican Party wants the population to be. Besides, if young kids are used to replace adults in the workforce, they are unlikely to find jobs as an adult because their jobs will be filled by another generation of child labor. Republicans want to groom future generations of Americans to accept what amounts to slave labor. It’s a vicious cycle that will only serve the interests of corporations and the GOP.